Maffia will play Roberta, a member of the hospital's board, who will first appear in the Nov. 29 episode. With the plane-crash lawsuit ramping up, it seems likely that Roberta and the rest of the board will be pulled into the fray.

"We've got the whole lawsuit, which really starts to blow up in this Thursday's episode," Chandra Wilson recently told us. "Where that's going to take all of the participants, and who's going to ultimately end up with the blame for the accident? I think that's going to also come in as a surprise."